Tag Archive: parents

I remember, 5 years ago when we bought this house, that I thought it was absolutely amazing. What I didn’t anticipate is that all the hard work my parents and I put into it could make it look even better. We turned a concrete bunker (our basement) into an amazing multi-purpose room, complete with books, toys, exercise machines, and couches. We even went so far as to buy curtains for the windows from India in order to spruce it up. And today, my dad and I installed more curtains, curtain rods, and curtain holdbacks all over our house. To most people, this would seem like a chore; to me, it is an opportunity to spend more quality time with my parents =].

After many months, I got the chance to sit down with my parents and watch a Hindi movie. Now usually I despise these movies, as they are usually rubbish, with no offense to the actors. These movies are just mass-produced, and are often intended for the poor, nearly illiterate population that resides in India. However, the movie I saw tonight was called No One Killed Jessica. Now, while this may seem like another B-grade film, it actually wasn’t. This is a great movie, which provides an eye-opening insight into the Indian justice system. It’s about a young girl who gets shot at a nightclub, and the struggles that her sister faces while trying to get the killer sentenced. As with everything in India, this is not easy. The family of the killer starts to pay off the witnesses to the murder, and it is only with the help of a prominent news anchor that the truth is revealed. This may seem a little far-fetched, but it is based on a true story. In the end, more than 200,000 people were rooting for this girl that they had never met before, because the miscarriage of justice made them all feel insecure. Instead of just sitting on their hands, however, these people brought about a change with peaceful demonstrations, in much the same way as their predecessors did during the time of Gandhi and the British Raj. All this happened as recently as 2006. The fact that people from all parts of such a diverse country can come together in support of one stranger, and ultimately bring about a positive change, gives me hope for the future of my motherland =).

This is somewhat related to my previous Positivity Post, in that it’s about spending time with my parents. Today, for the first time in a LONG time, I got the chance to sit down with my family and eat dinner, without any arguments or incidents in general. Usually it’s me causing these arguments, but tonight went very nicely. I learned a lot about my parents’ childhoods, and about their individual struggles through their early years. For the first time in my life, I’m getting to know the people who have raised me to become the person I am today. Their persistence has given me the values that I adhere to today, and that I will pass on in the future =].

Spending time with your loved ones is never a bad thing. In fact, I believe that we don’t spend enough time with our families, especially as teenagers. We wake up (grudgingly) early in the morning to go to school. We have limited contact with our parents at this time, because everyone is in a rush to get to school or to go to work. We don’t see them throughout the day, and when we get home, we sit in our rooms, studying or chatting on Facebook and MSN. We, as teenagers, need to take the time out of our busy schedules and utilize that time with our parents. They have dedicated their lives into making us who we are today, and we should reciprocate that love in any way we can. Spending a little time with my parents really brightened up my day today =].

As a teenager in my last year of high school, I have wondered many times about the influence of parents on our lives. Every so often I get into an argument with my mom about my studies, or with my dad about many different life topics (last time it was spiritual self-realization). I know that both of them are extremely knowledgeable, but some days I feel, as I am sure most teenagers do, that I know more about some things than they do.

For example, have you ever had your parents come up to you and get angry at you for not doing homework? This happens to me almost every day, and each day I try in vain to explain to my parents that just because they did not see me doing my homework does not mean that I did not do it (that sounds confusing, I know). They always tell me that I am lazy and that I procrastinate, even when I point out that I hand most, if not all, of my work in on time. I also frequently mention to them that I’m in IB, and that I have an immense workload from the get-go. However, this usually reinforces their point about not seeing me do any homework, and once again leads to an argument about my after-school productivity.

For my next trick, I will call upon the well-known fact which states that most teenagers believe they know more than their parents, and by extension, everything there is to know. Too often we get into arguments with the figures of authority in our lives, trying to prove them wrong. The funny part is that we continue to argue even when we know we are wrong. There are very few teens who can stop an argument and admit to their parents that they are wrong. Even so, is it true that we, as teenagers, know more about some areas of life than our parents do? Or is age the determining factor in terms of life experience?

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